ADHD diet update - Murdock Mondays

We have been on a dye free diet for about two or three months now.  The whole family eats dye free, however the dye free diet is for my middle son who has ADHD.  It appears that to people who are ADHD they are hypersensitive to the dyes in our foods and its almost like they have an alergic reaction after eating foods with dyes. (There are tons of studies on why they are bad, I am not linking to any, but this is a good overview on them.)

When I told my husband we were going to do this diet, I was at my whits end.  We discipline, we are good parents, I am always looking for ways to become a better parent and person in general.  So even though I realise that his behavior had lead me to try the diet before I tried medications, and we had gotten HUGE feed back from family and non family that he was a different kid while on the diet, I still said when he went to summer camp that he didnt have to follow the diet.

Big mistake.  He started exhibiting unacceptable behavior at home day one and two (it was a day camp)  day three the camp counselor pulled me aside and told me that Eli had spent 15 minuets running from 3 male counselors.  I was mortified.  I asked if I could bring his lunch and explained the diet and what we do.  Luckily the counselor him self was ADHD and had been on a similar diet when he was younger.  We finally realized that he had ketchup that day.  Ketchup is loaded with red dye.  Then I thought back to another time I made an exception to where he had been totally normal, then he had a hot dog with ketchup and not more than 5 minuets later was acting like a fool.  So normal, non organic ketchup made it to the "no, never, not in your life time" list.

Trying to navagate this dye free eating is daunting and quite frankly it makes me angry that non food items are in our food.  As we go on I learn more, but since it is impossible to know if dyes are in food with out reading the lable we have tried to implement some rules when we are out in a place where the diet can not be stuck to strictly (vacations, etc)

1) Nothing red.  I think you can safely assume anything red has a ton of dyes (unless you are at an organic restaurant)

2) No cheese products.  You can also most likely assume its not real cheese.

3) The only acceptable soft drink (if they really must have one) is sprite.

We have started carrying his ketchup with us, and what reinforces it even more to me that the diet works is - he hates to get off of it.  He notices a huge difference in himself and he always asks me if what he is about to eat is okay.

When I started researching ADHD food I found these blogs/links most helpful

1) Our Family Eats - Great for eating/food

2) A good list of ideas to get you thinking

3) This is a link to my ADHD party food board.  Now that you have a child with a special diet, you have to get in the habit of bringing snacks with you.  If I know there will be a treat I try and bring him one too.  I have pinned cute natural food ideas here.

ADHD Diet - Day 3, 4 & 5

My motto this week was "Come Closer"  I had read a blog about it (I tried to find it, but I cant.  When I do I will link to it)  It basically said that you don't yell across the room for people in any work type situation.  That if you need a person, you go to them - come closer.  So I started asking the boys to come to me, or I would go to them.  This cut down on yelling, actually it made it almost zero.

Wednesday we did some cleaning, I purchased birthday cards for my volunteers at church.  The kids were having some serious carb cravings so I made some home made tortillas and they ate them with their ham and cheese roll ups for lunch.

Thursday was pretty similar to the earlier days.  I am noticing a huge difference in Eli, but I am wondering if anyone else is.

Friday I took the kids to their grandparents house.  I packed their lunches and got dinner together for our evening group.  This part is going to take some practice.  I dont normally have to worry about packing food.   I replaced our toothpaste.  Now for the BIG reveal that this is all worth it.  I called their grandfather after they had been with him for about an hour or two and asked if he noticed a difference.  Now their grandfather is a meat and potatoes - no special diet kind of guy.  He said YES!  He has become one of my biggest ADHD diet fans and goes out of his way to make sure they stay on the diet. 

ADHD Diet - Day 2

With day one under our belts we move on to day two.  I forgot to mention yesterday that alson with the new diet we are implementing a morning exercize program.  We are doing a couch to K program and on our off days we do a kids work out program from you tube.

Breakfast and lunch were the same today and I cooked less sausage and eggs.  Again the little one refused to eat sausage and eggs.  I am not sure what that is about.  The children adjusted quickly to requesting healthy snacks (hard boiled eggs, cheese, fruit).  Between lunch and breakfast, and then again between lunch and dinner, I prepared a tray of apples and carrots for them to snack on.

Eli did seem much calmer today.  I think I need a few days to know if this was just a good day, or if the diet is helping.  I do feel that the exercise is helping.

ADHD diet

We began to suspect ADHD in my middle child.  We have already made the choice of alternative schooling so we decided to try a diet change to see if we noticed a difference. (6 week challenge). I spent most of the weekend preparing and cleaning out the pantry.

For the first few weeks, I will  keep the meals very simple as times goes on I will add more choices at breakfast and lunch.  Today for breakfast we had our pasure raised eggs (we own our own chickens) and nitrate free sausage.  Two of the kids chose to have bannanas instead.

While I was doing school with my oldest child, my middle child (the one we are doing the diet for) runs into my bed room and finds the only candy that I had forgotten about.  My husbands M&M dispencer.  I quickly empited it.

For lunch we had nitrate free lunch meat roll ups, cheese, carrots and apple slices.  It was a huge hit.  The kids ate it up.  Last week I went to Dream Dinners in Pearland, because I was wanting to make this week as easy as possible.  I am working on getting my own ADHD freezer meals together.  We had the Cranberry Buttermilk Chicken with oven roasted broccoli.  The whole family said they would eat it agian.  It was very nice to have something on hand to make this process easier.

Some odd things I noticed, I was extremely tired today (not related to the diet change) and I had purchased enough bananas to last us all week.  While I was resting, Eli ate two bunches of bananas.  I am not sure what that is about, I set a limit of one banana per person, per day.